Sage Geosystems' bet on underground energy storage

About 90% of global energy storage is pumped storage hydropower – which requires a mountain, a lake, and a whole lot of permitting. While lithium batteries have gotten drastically cheaper over the last decade, they’re still expensive for longer durations.   But Cindy Taff and her team at Sage Geosystems are developing geothermal technology that could revolutionize energy storage. Instead of pumping water up a mountain, they pump it deep into the earth, providing cost-effective, long-term storage for intermittent renewable sources. They’re piloting this technology at a new commercial facility in partnership with  San Miguel Electric Cooperative, a rural Texas electric cooperative that is transitioning from coal to solar and battery storage thanks to a USDA grant.   In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems about its groundbreaking new technology, their first commercial facility, and upcoming partnerships with geothermal giant Ormat Technologies.  Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

In 2020, Microsoft announced a major goal: by 2050 the company aims to remove from the atmosphere all the carbon emissions it has produced since its founding in 1975.  When Phil Goodman joined the company in 2022, he quickly found that the market for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) was just getting off the ground. That meant that in order to meet its climate pledge, Microsoft needed to help foster the carbon removal market.  In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Phil Goodman, director of Microsoft’s carbon removal portfolio, about what it takes to structure offtake agreements for CDR, the challenges of fostering an emerging market, and some of the company’s most promising CDR partnerships.  Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Alexandria Herr, Stephen Lacey, and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

Back in January, Captura CEO Steve Oldham was sitting in a conference room in Hawaii, entertaining reps from the company’s first potential customer. What the customer didn’t know was that Captura’s ocean-based carbon removal pilot –the whole reason for the visit – still wasn’t working. The stakes were high. Steve’s team needed to prove they could pull off a major pilot under intense time crunch — amid broader pressure on the carbon removal sector to show it can scale reliably and fast. So what did it take to install the pilot and win over a first customer? In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Steve about Captura’s rapid scale-up from a desktop prototype to a 1,000-ton pilot. They also discuss the science behind removing CO₂ from ocean water, and the difficult decisions required to keep the company on track — including walking away from a premier industrial site and racing to rebuild the project half a world away. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. This episode was produced by Daniel Woldorff and Erin Hardick. Anne Bailey is our senior editor. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

This year in the U.S., steel manufacturers will produce more than 71 million tons of steel – enough to build nearly 200 Empire State buildings. It's a stunning statistic, but not surprising. The steel industry has fueled economic growth and innovation in America since the early 1800s.  But for every ton of conventional steel produced, two tons of CO2 are emitted, making the coal industry responsible for about 7% of global emissions.  Steel is widely known as one of those "hard to decarbonize" industries. But Boston Metal's innovations are pointing the way forward to a net-zero steel industry that relies on renewable power instead of coal.   In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Tadeu Carneiro, CEO of Boston Metal, about the company's first commercial facility in Brazil -- a facility that aims to reach industrial-scale production of critical metals by next year. And Lara asks Tadeu how his team developed and scaled a technology he calls “harder than keeping an ice cream cone frozen in hell.” Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

In 2007 Sam White, co-founder of Promethean Power Systems, was traveling through India looking for a rural electrification problem to solve. He and his team had just won a $10,000 grant in an MIT competition, and they wanted to find an industry in India that needed their help. After looking at the sugar industry and the grape industry, they finally settled on dairy.   India is the largest producer and consumer of milk in the world, but poor infrastructure makes getting chilled milk from farmer to consumer difficult.  Industry standards require milk to be chilled within four hours of milking the cows, or bacteria spoils it. India averages six hours. Sam’s team had found their problem. But it would take years of failed designs to solve it. In the end they perfected a 500 liter tank that could chill a thousand liters of milk – a 300% increase in efficiency from previous designs. Today, Promethean had installed 2800 of those tanks across India.  In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Sam about the evolution of Promethean's thermal battery design, the upsides of slow but steady growth in climate tech, and how Promethean dealt with technology copycats in India.

Clean energy founders love to talk about technology, capital, and scale. But few are prepared for the fourth pillar of success: government. Shomik Dutta, a co-founder and managing partner at Overture VC, learned that lesson firsthand after a career that spanned Obama’s White House, private equity, and venture capital. His takeaway: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Shomik thinks the next generation of climate startups must treat policy as a core competency, not an afterthought. That means building real influence in Washington, developing a muscle for storytelling, and sometimes even instilling a little fear in politicians. It’s a strategy Overture has baked into its investment model. The firm partners directly with Boundary Stone Partners, one of DC’s top government affairs shops, to help portfolio companies navigate regulation and shape outcomes. In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks with Shomik about how industrial policy is reshaping venture capital, why crypto offers an unexpected lobbying lesson, and how founders can engage the government as a strategic partner— even in this moment of political backlash. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey and Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

For decades, nuclear has struggled with cost overruns and delays — Georgia’s Vogtle plant being the latest example. Kairos Power co-founder and CEO Mike Laufer thinks the solution is to flip the script: focus first on non-nuclear demonstrations and then iterate quickly.  It’s a counterintuitive and potentially risky strategy . Rapid iteration isn’t the way engineers or funders like the DOE have traditionally developed nuclear plants. Kairos also combined two technologies — TRISO fuel and molten salt — into a first-of-a-kind design. Theoretically it would be safer, but Kairos was also tackling one of the hardest problems in engineering: building a reactor from scratch. After eight years of development, its approach has led to three engineering test units, a novel contracting model with the Department of Energy, and a landmark partnership with TVA and Google to deliver nuclear power to data centers.  So how did Kairos pull it off? In this episode, Lara talked with Mike about how Kairos executed its ambitious iterative approach without overextending itself. They also cover why Kairos chose to vertically integrate and build its own in-house machine shop, plus what technical setbacks taught the team.  Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Daniel Woldorff and Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Deep into engineering studies for Project Cormorant, 8 Rivers' massive low-carbon ammonia facility, the team discovered new efficiencies that would create a safer, more advanced version of their hydrogen technology. But there was one problem: they'd already invested heavily in the current design. CEO Damian Beauchamp faced a classic dilemma. Should 8 Rivers stick with their existing approach and avoid the sunk cost fallacy? Or risk everything on a better design, knowing it meant more time, more money, and missed deadlines? That choice became even more complicated when shifting political winds derailed their anticipated offtake agreement with an investor, forcing 8 Rivers to secure new buyers for most of their planned 900,000 tons of ammonia production. In this episode, Lara talks with Damian about navigating the sunk cost trap, building relationships with massive turbine manufacturers like Siemens Energy, and how 8 Rivers has survived as one of the few companies successfully deploying large-scale industrial decarbonization projects since 2008. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick and Daniel Woldorff. Edited by Anne Bailey. Technical direction by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

Three years ago this month, the Inflation Reduction Act passed, marking the largest investment in climate policy in U.S. history. It included over $300 billion to address global warming and was expected to unlock nearly $3 trillion in private investment by 2032. But then came Donald Trump.  Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has worked to dismantle much of that progress, including withholding funds, canceling loans and grants, and working with Congress to roll back tax credits. For those working in climate tech, it’s been a pretty dark time.  But U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, one of the lawmakers behind the IRA, says he’s surprisingly optimistic about future policy wins despite White House opposition to climate and clean tech.  In this episode, Lara talks with Sen. Hickenlooper about passing the landmark climate law and protecting it, his ideas for building a bipartisan coalition for permitting reform, and why he’s actually hopeful eight months into Trump’s second term. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

In 2022, Zach Jones learned that his technical team at Graphitic Energy was secretly working nights and weekends on an unsanctioned approach to producing clean hydrogen from natural gas. It was an approach that abandoned the technology Zach and the company had spent years developing. And Zach wasn’t happy. With investors to answer to and a pilot plant ready for construction, Zach couldn't switch gears completely to pursue an untested concept. But his team disagreed. And the months-long mutiny that followed nearly tore the company apart. In this episode, Lara talks with Zach about navigating that internal crisis, making the difficult decision to pivot technologies mid-development, and how Graphitic Energy's new approach produces both clean hydrogen and valuable graphite from the same process—eliminating the "green premium" typically associated with clean alternatives. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.